A collection of the best and the very, very worst of the outrageous, cunning, sweet and silly messages on US license plates. Americans in all states -- perhaps as many as 20 million -- have personalised or 'vanity' license plates. The types of messages vary from comments on one's car (AWESOME, WHOOSH, GASHOG), to hard luck stories (IBLUIT). People state their professions (I FLOSS, LOC DOC) and their interests (LUV2BET, SKIH20). They court each other (HOT4YOU, NOTWED) and warn each other (NVR AGN, O NOOOO, XQQZME). They glorify their animals (CATLUVR, PENGWEN). They pray (ELOHIM, PRAZHM), and they brag (GR8 MOM, A1 WIFE).
Bite-sized bits of information to give you the edge on trivia night—from crime and punishment to the rich and famous to ghosts, ghouls, oddballs, and more! Packed with more than 400 pages, Uncle John’s Bathroom Reader: Attack of the Factoids is a fact-a-palooza of obscure information. Like what, you ask? Here are just a few extraordinary examples:* Bats always turn left when they exit a cave.* In the 1960s, astronauts trained for moon voyages by walking on Hawaiian lava fields.* Lloyd’s of London insured Bruce Springsteen’s voice for 3.5 million English pounds.* Physician Amynthas of Alexandria, Greece, performed the first known nose job in the Third Century B.C.* Military toilet paper is printed in a camouflage design, since white could attract enemy fire.* Elvis Presley always wore a helmet when watching football on TV.* King Henry VIII’s ladies at court had a ration of one gallon of beer per day.* It takes the energy from fifty leaves on an apple tree to produce one ripe fruit.* The only country to host the Summer Olympics but not win a single gold medal was Canada, in 1976. And that’s just the beginning! So what are you waiting for? Attack!
Divine Signs is the concluding volume of the ethnographic trilogy about the communicative tensions in everyday American cultural life H. L. Goodall, Jr., began with Casing a Promised Land and continued with Living in the Rock n Roll Mystery. In this final work, the terms for understanding these tensions are found in a historical and mythological drama featuring Power (as the embodiment of the modern), Other (as the embodiment of the postmodern), and Spirit (as the unifying power capable of connecting disparate selves to dangerously fragmented communities). For this study, the localized site of interpretation is in and around Pickens and Oconee Counties, South Carolina, where every day street signs, business advertisements on billboards, signs that announce church themes, Internet postings, and other forms of public communication that invite private meanings are read as rhetorical invitations to participate in these myths and mysteries. Using themes discoverable in such public forms of communication, Goodall deconstructs a variety of communal experiences--from annual community celebrations to weekly therapy sessions in local beauty salons to the fall audience rituals of Clemson University football games--to gain a deeper appreciation of the unifying symbolic orders that enrich the interpretive possibilities of our lives and that serve as signs of our deeply spiritual connections to each other and to the planet. In the last sections of the book, the interplays of Power, Other, and Spirit are read into and against a wide variety of everyday interpretive contexts, from Rush Limbaugh and talk radio to narratives about angels and stories about the transformative powers of spiritual practices in organizations. Goodall then asks the important question: Where are the themes of this mythological drama leading us? In the stunning conclusion, Goodall creates communicative, cultural, and spiritual challenges for us all.
